Thursday, June 26, 2008

The Clarion has heard from many continued supporters of the invasion of Iraq.

"It didn't matter that Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction."

"It didn't matter that Iraq didn't have ballistic missiles with the range to reach North America."

"It didn't matter that (this time) Iraq had not attacked any of its sovereign neighbors."

"It didn't matter that the United Nations didn't support the invasion."

"It didn't matter than many of America's allies from the first Gulf War, didn't support the invasion."

"It didn't matter that Iraq was in no way connected with the attacks of September 11, 2001."

"It didn't matter that Iraq was not allied with Al-Qeda."

"It didn't matter Iraq was not harboring any Al-Qeda operatives."

Why didn't it matter? What is the rationale? (ex post facto, of course.)

"Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator. The man was unfairly imprisoning, torturing, mass murdering his own people. Such evil had to go. It was America's duty and right, alone, if necessary."

Where are these supporters of the Iraq invasion today? Why are they not clamoring for an American invasion of Zimbabwe?Robert Mugabe is an evil dictator. He is imprisoning, toruring and mass murdering his own people in an effort to maintain his personal power. His exploitation of the country has been without limits, almost without parallel, this side of Kim Jong-il.

Where is the outrage? Where is hue and cry for the imminent invasion of Zimbabwe on behalf of its suffering people? Does the color of the skin of most of Zimbabwe's citizens somehow make them less valuable to America? Is it their country's lack of fossil fuels? Pre-Mugabe, Zimbabwe was once the "Breadbasket of Africa."

Why is it less valued?

King George?

Viceroy Cheney?

Senator Lieberman?

Senator McCain?

Senator Obama? (Who opposing the Iraq invasion, from the beginning, has an opportunity to weigh in differently...)

The Clarion's view, on both Iraq and Zimbabwe, war is admission of failure. Victory is peace.

Monday, June 23, 2008

The Clarion was disappointed to read about a flip-flop on offshore drilling from a Democrat we respect, Senator Jim Webb of Virginia. Webb, a former Marine, and Secretary of the Navy, is being touted as a possible Obama running mate. But when we looked into it further, we found that Webb had not reversed course on offshore oil drilling. He had, rather, advocated drilling for natural gas be allowed 50 miles offshore. Natural gas is a better option than oil for a panoply of reasons.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Not content with having strengthened the hand of the hardest of the hardliners in Iran, the Bush administration is intent on turningthe only nucleararmed, Muslim majority county, Pakistan, into a virulent enemy of the United States.

This week saw eleven Pakistani soldiers, ostensibly American allies, killed by United States bombing. The Bush team has gone with its standard response, deny, deny, deny. It wasn’t our fault. They fired first. They were working with insurgents in the area. Unfortunately, American credibility in the region is abysmal. So even when American military commanders and institutions are telling the truth, they are not believed. This is not in the least because the faux-supporters of democracy in the Bush regime, have actually supported and continue to support the rule of Pakistan dictator Perez Musharraf to the tune of billions of American taxpayer dollarsagainst the willof the Pakistani people. Sadly, a leader who initially offered hope, Afghanistan’s Hamed Karzai is being stained with same taint of American stooge-dom, co-option and corruption.

Like land mines, cluster bombs are an abhorrent device, they are canisters packed with small bombs, called bomblets that spread over a large area when a canister is dropped from a plane or fired from the ground. While this sounds bad enough in and of itself, the real kicker is that like land mines, cluster bombs frequently kill civilians and other innocent bystanders to conflict. Cluster bombs are designed to explode on impact, but frequently do not. The unexploded munitions have killed and maimed thousands in much the same manner that the widely scattered land mines of the past several decades killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of non-combatants.

How on Earth can the United States oppose a treaty to ban the use of these weapons?

Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, Stephen D. Mull, "We decided not to go to Oslo, because we don't want to give weight to a process that we think is ultimately flawed, because we don't think that any international effort is going to succeed unless you get the major producers and the users of these weapons at the table."

Among the countries that lined up with the United States in refusing to sign on to the convention, the totalitarian People's Republic of China, Pakistan, otherwise known as, the military dictatorship that gave North Korea the Bomb, Vladimir Putin's Russia, along with the Israelis and the Indians. Quite a group of luminaries that America sided with. It is worth noting that the most recent documented use of cluster bombs was during Israel's 2006 conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon. America has not, as yet, used cluster bombs in Iraq.

The Washington Postquoted Navy Commander, Bob Mehal, a Pentagon spokesman, "...cluster munitions have demonstrated military utility, and their elimination from U.S. stockpiles would put the lives of our soldiers and those of our coalition partners at risk."

Sweet. The logic underlying this premise would allow the use of any effective weapons systems; napalm, fire bombing, flamethrowers, land mines, even nuclear weapons. The argument being, if it has demonstrated military utility, there is nothing the United States of America rules out. Awful. Much like the Bush II doctrine of preemptive war, this logic is untenable in the long haul. It begets a kill or be killed mentality that has been implicit in humanity's worst moments.

"The only way to win the game (global thermal nuclear war,) is not to play."

What happened?

This week the United States undermined the principle behind those two quotes, moving closer to, rather than further from, global annihilation. It was a step in the wrong direction.

It is worth noting that while the United States rejected the Convention on Cluster Munitions under George Bush the II, it refused to sign the Convention to Ban the Use of Land Mines under Clinton I. This is especially important to recognize when Hillary Clinton is now excoriating Barack Obama for his military and foreign policy naivete. What Obama really proposes is change, a move away from group think, a willingness to work outside the confines of the military industrial complex's box.

A final point, a nuanced one at that, the Clarion mentioned earlier that the United States had not yet used cluster bombs in Iraq. NATO's European states have insured, as a matter of policy, NATO troops, including the United States's personnel, do not use cluster bombs in Afghanistan. In fact, the United States has barred the foreign sale of cluster bombs that do not have a 99% detonation rate on impact. A small step to be sure, but a step. Unfortunately, absent a unilateral ban, which the Convention on Cluster Munitions calls on signatories to impose with eight years, and the Clarion strongly supports, America will have to count on Pentagon auditors to insure only "good" cluster bombs are being sold. It will have to count on its military commanders to insure that no cluster bombs are being used.

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